Monkey Kingdom’s $1.3 Million Exploited in a Phishing Attack, Concerns Security Risks

• The administrator account was stolen by the attacker on Discord, an instant online texting facility.
• Monkey Kingdom phishing is the newest entry in the successions of frauds in the past few months as NFTs are getting popularized rapidly.
• A compensation fund has been launched by the Monkey Kingdom to reimburse the users affected by the attack.

Attack on Administrator Account

The Monkey Kingdom, a famous NFT project based in Hong Kong and promoted by personalities like Steve Aoki and JJ Lin, was attacked by a hacker, where the Discord group chat’s administrator account was attacked by the hacker initially, enabling the attacker to wipe $1.3 Million with of crypto assets via a phishing attack link.

A phishing link was sent to the discord group chat via the administrator account that was attacked by the hacker as soon as the project got a kick start in its new sales. 7,000 Solanas were lost by the purchasers because of the attack, equaling the amount of $1.3 Million.

Phishing remains the most common type of online scam to the date, which is utilized for grabbing the user data unethically, including credit card pins and login credentials. Phishing is done when a hacker covers himself up under the name of a known entity, luring the users into accessing the email or text they sent. The attack is now being utilized for breaching the crypto wallets of users.

Andrew Man, an NFT enthusiast and a Real estate investor, said, “It’s become ubiquitous. Almost every week, someone in my WeChat group would say that some NFTs have been stolen.” He added, “A friend of mine lost a plot of land in The Sandbox.” Sandbox is a game where NFTs like virtual lands can be traded in real life by the users.

The Project was Suppose to Help Asian Communities

Unfortunately, the attack happened when the buyers were gathering and waiting for the second airdrop to drop. The Monkey Kingdom consists of 2,222 digital portraits that were generated algorithmically and features the “The Monkey King” Sun Wukong, a mythical character in Chinese mythology. The amount that would be raised by the sales of the NFTs was supposed to be utilized as a donation fund for a charity, which would eventually be assisting the Asian communities all over the world. Monkey Kingdom is one of the booming NFT projects based on the Asian Continent.

Monkey Kingdom tweeted regarding the hack stating, “At 10:00pm HKT when our presale began, our Announcement channel on Discord was hijacked by a bot named ‘Monkey Kingdom’ while our website was experiencing traffic. A discord webhook got compromised and posted a phishing link to the Announcement channel.”

The Users will be Reimbursed

The Monkey Kingdom has made a promise to the users that they will be reimbursed in full. The monkey kingdom tweeted, “Monkey Kingdom community, we have your back! We have begun processing compensation requests and will be contacting individuals starting today.”